(I can't vouch for the veracity of this, as it came from a mailing list (albeit a pretty well-regarded one) and not straight from the Burning Man organization. However, if you're just chomping at the bit to get started dreaming up your theme-related projects, here you go! -- Flux)

Vault of Heaven

In the time it takes to read this sentence, the sun will travel 1,500 miles in its orbit round the center of our local galaxy, the Milky Way. Our theme this year will contemplate the cosmos -- real science and its surreal realms of possibility; time and space will warp and dimple, quasars pulse, supernovas might blaze in the night. The laws of Nature as you know them could abruptly change. Close yours eyes and hold your breath. Prepare to fall into the sky.

yeah, maybe I spent too much time in Utah.
i dunno, most people don't think of heaven in a literal meaning of the root of the word. most people think at least afterlife. so i take it back re: the Christian part as other religions also use the word "heaven" to equate with "afterlife." to me, it just sounds too clublike (i.e., how many clubs or club nights were coined "Heaven" in the 90s and beyond??? Heaven in London... is a famous one.) that's just my opinion and by golly i'm gonna say it AND i am barely going to use capital letters too! passive agressive??? maybe...

Maybe I take things a little too literally but when I think of Burning Man, I think of it AS the [a] vault of heaven because heaven to me is the uninhibited soul acting as it wishes to but through a body on the physical plane... Which is what Burning Man is to me, peoples collective feelings being displayed, items of joy and sorrow and intimacy out on an open field for people to experience over and over again. It's release on many levels.

The stars reflect that feeling. As small as a dot but so important... You can get lost in the crowd or become a part of a bigger thing that shapes your life and gives you feelings just like the constellations tell stories you can watch or become a part of it and share the feeling.

I think there's much to be gained from this years theme in its literal sense (vault of heaven as the sphere of stars in the sky) and I am very anxious to share in this, and other interps, with others on the playa.

I see this sphere as our oldest 'big picture' understanding of where we are in this universe. It was an understanding of the sphere of stars that showed our ancestors that something was different in those points which moved across the sphere, the planets, giving us a greater understanding of cyclic time.

We are now before another threshold, one we'll likely live in for quite some time. We have started to explore outside our world, to other planets in our near vicinity. But from Mars, Venus, or other nearby planets, the night sky...this vault, would appear much the same. This is our next threshold.

To take our moving point, this small dot where we see and experience the world, and know that it is within the greater place, one which appears so static, which would be recognizable to a person ten thousand years ago and ten thousand of years from now...to me that is awe inspiring. Not only in its scope and breadth, but as a place where we are....that we are a part of. When looking at the stars, its easy to see ourselves as separate from their majesty, whereas we're as much a part of it as anything else we see.

It brings to mind Buckminster Fuller's concept of "Spaceship Earth", that we're all sharing a ride through the universe on this wet rock with its tenuous vaporous shell, but also that we're a part of it, we're a player in the grand scheme of stars. We're a point in that vault from any number of different viewpoints out in the cosmos.